Matisyahu!

I don’t know what to tell you guys, but I think Matisyahu may be keeping me sane… so indulge me…  ya motherfuckers!

Matisyahu (Matthew Miller) holds a strange niche in American pop music.  He’s an Orthodox Jewish rapper and Reggae artist.  When I first heard of this guy, and perhaps some of you know his stuff, I figured he had a shtick.  But, in truth, he’s entirely authentic.  He’s the kind of Jew that wants to live 3,000 years ago with a brief detour into 18th century Poland for some clothes.

But check this out:

That’s beautiful stuff.   It’s Rap and Raggae and Rock… and Judaism.

How strange is that?  And it works!

This is a young guy, born in ’79, raised in PA and White Plains, who smoked considerable dope, dabbled in psychedelics, dinked around on his guitar with his buddies, and followed Phish.  Precisely the kind of person I would have been hanging out with in my college years. A benign degenerate!

But then, I am sorry to tell you, the Zionists got a hold of him.  

Yup.  They sure as shit did.  He went to a heritage thing for young’ns in Israel and it put the zap in his head.  So, then he got all Jewy and joined the Lubavitch Hasids in 2001.  These are the hard-core boys in Crown Heights, New York.   He studied Torah and played music and then he studied more Torah and played more music.

Then he played some clubs.  And then he played some more clubs, after getting permission from the Rabbis who, undoubtedly, must have thought, “We need cool Jews.”

And he made this:

I am grateful that this guy is out there.  He somehow manages to bring together Orthodox Judaism with… I don’t know… a progressive, urban, pluralistic, and spiritual sensibility.

I find that amazing!  It’s just a beautiful thing.

A few months ago I was on  a  MUNI bus in San Francisco.  I was talking to a buddy of mine and telling him about Matisyahu.  I told him about this great musician who filled this weird niche.  I told him about how he was an Orthodox Jew who did Rap and Reggae.

Suddenly a man next to me became enraged and spit on me… and stalked off the bus.